On May 27, a Kashmiri Pandit (KP) activist, Rajinder Pandita broke shocking news on his Facebook. He said a Pandit lady died at her Chandrigam residence in Kashmir. On hearing news of the death of her, her daughter, living in Jagti, near Nagrota in Jammu, suffered a cardiac arrest and died. “Mother and daughter left together,” he wrote.
Being scattered across India, KPs suffered heavily in the Covid19’s second wave. A Delhi-based publication, Naad, a monthly published by All India Kashmiri Samaj, has done a quick survey (done by Anil Reshi) of the deaths that have taken place between April 22 and May 19, 2021. Shared by Pandita, it offers details of 367 deaths that have taken place in this period. His page has added at least four more bits of information about the deaths. Pandita says 80 per cent of these deaths were because of Covid19.
Analysis of the Naad information suggests that Jammu was the epicentre of KP losses in the four weeks as 148 KPs lost their lives there. Most of the migrants live in Jammu. Even if the younger ones are working elsewhere, most of their parents are in Jammu.
The second major state where most of the fatalities were reported is Utter Pradesh where 73 KPs were reported dead. UP, it may be recalled here, has remained a historic area for migrations ever since the mutiny took place in 1857. Pandit Nehru’s forefather’s had also migrated to Allahabad and now a number of KP families are working there post-migration.
Delhi, the capital city, falls at No 3 in the ranking of places with high mortality. As many as 52 deaths were reported from Delhi in the time period. Haryana falls at No 4 with 36 KP deaths in this period. There were as many as 28 deaths, which lacked any information about where their cremation had taken place.
This story is from the June 6 - 12, 2021 edition of Kashmir Life.
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This story is from the June 6 - 12, 2021 edition of Kashmir Life.
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